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2016 (4) TMI 776 - HC - Service TaxWhether the Tribunal was justified in deleting the demand for service tax with interest on the premise that the show cause notice did not specify such demand - Goods Transport Operator Service - Held that:- merely because in the show cause notice no legal provision is cited or wrong provision is mentioned, by itself may not be the ground for invalidating the action of the authority, if the power for such action can be traced to another source. However, in the present case, we are concerned with a far graver lapse on part of the adjudicating authority namely, of not giving any details of the unpaid service tax which he proposed to recover with interest. When the assessee was thus visited with show cause notice, he was clearly in dark about the nature and extent of service tax allegedly remained unpaid and which the authority wanted to recover. The show cause notice was completely general in nature, gives no details of unpaid service tax and merely called upon the assessee why such service tax with interest should not be recovered. The show cause notice was more in the nature of a fishing inquiry of the assessee's outstanding tax liability. It was perhaps because of this lacuna that the Commissioner in his revisional order had to be satisfied with directing the assessee to pay service tax on the gross amount of transport charges paid by them to the Goods Transport Operators. Therefore, the Tribunal was justified in deleting the service tax demand. - Appeal disposed of
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